1. Field
The subject matter disclosed herein relates to classification of somatosensory evoked potential waveforms.
2. Information
Individuals who may have had injuries to their peripheral nerve, spinal cord, brain stem, or primary somatosensory cortex may be examined to detect severity of an injury or to monitor neural structures within their somatosensory pathways. One way of examining the integrity and functional status of the somatosensory nerve pathway is by monitoring evoked potentials. In this context, the term “evoked potentials” is intended to refer to electrical responses generated by an individual's nervous system in response to sensory stimuli. Somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) may comprise of a series of waves that may reflect sequential activation of neural structures along somatosensory pathways.
A dorsal column-lemniscal system may comprise an anatomical substrate of SEPs within a Central Nervous System. Intraoperative SEP monitoring in this context refers to techniques used for reducing risks of iatrogenic injury to a spinal cord during spinal surgery or neurosurgery, for example. SEP waveforms may be recorded and evaluated. However, SEP recordings may be accompanied by noise signals which may decrease quality of an SEP recording, making identification of one or more peak signal values of an SEP recording more challenging. Such noise signals, for example, may affect accuracy of latency/amplitude measurements or undermine methods of processing SEP recordings, for example. Such noise signals, also referred to in this context as artifacts, may comprise relative transient phenomena from physiologic or non-physiologic sources.